O! Let me not be mad,
Not mad, sweet heavens,
Keep me temperance:
I would not be mad!

Shakespeare: King Lear


We might think it an exaggerated response from a man who accepted the loss of his kingdom, his status, his daughters and finally his health. But in some ways it reflects our fear of becoming mentally ill -- of losing our mind. True, we are also afraid of other forms of illness and disease -- cancer, for example -- but there is a difference in degree. Losing an organ or a limb, losing a portion of life to a protracted illness, or even losing life itself to disease are personal tragedies. But if, as has been said, the brain is the citadel of the soul, when we lose our mind we lose ourselves. We become, in the words of Euripides, 'a body as void of mind as a statue in the marketplace'... we fear mental illness ... the mentally ill are still stigmatized. This stigma becomes even more pronounced when mental illness is associated with criminality. The person doubly labelled as mad and bad is doubly damned (emphasis added)⁵.

Those two quotations reflect my personal feelings based upon my own experience. It is even worse when a person is labelled or libelled as "bad and mad" and feels, as I do, neither mad nor a wrongdoer. Those who are merely labelled are in a much worse situation than the ones who are really violent and mentally sick. The mental and intellectual abilities of the healthy are intact and so are their human emotions. Therefore, upon finding themselves in a hopeless situation, such as involuntary incarceration, a healthy person may suffer much more than a sick person.

The well-known psychiatrist Dr. Thomas S. Szasz wrote about the danger of labelling: "If I use the word schizophrenia ... it is a terrible thing. Once this word gets out, particularly in the court room, you are finished. You have no rights.⁶ " That was what actually happened to me.

Dr. Szasz also wrote about the inquisitorial attitudes of our contemporary psychiatrists.⁷ His works reveal that the abuse of mental patients is a common phenomenon, but I believe that my case is a more shocking example of abuse, since it shows how psychiatrists can discredit their profession without penalty and how legal authorities are -- willingly or unwillingly -- docile accomplices of corrupt or incompetent psychiatrists. In Chapter XIII: Inquisition and My Treatment: An Analogy and my Factum (Statement of Facts) to the Quebec Court of Appeal I have written about the analogies between my experience of compulsory hospitalization and the inquisitorial procedures.

Let me digress to explain the premises on which I shall take up the issues in my story.

In everyday life we argue and discuss various subjects, sometimes we chat just to pass the time. But "idle talk and trivial conversation do not rank as discourse" -- as Professor Luce said.

Wherever men debate, discuss, and argue, Logic is a court of appeal in the background; whenever a man debates a matter in his own mind, a silent Logic arbitrates. No man in his senses will willingly and persistently defy a clear verdict by Logic. Whoever sets out to break Logic, as has been said, Logic will break him.⁸

Conclusions based on invalid and false premises in logic are called fallacies. It is especially important to observe the rules of logic in matters pertaining to the law.

In La loi et vos droits⁹, a basic book for laymen, the author P.-E. Marchand wrote:

According to Ulpien, the law is a command of reason, of which the aim is common welfare. The law emanates from and is manifested in the authorities.

The law flows, above everything else, from reason, that is unfettered reason recognizing the principles on how issues are to be ordered. The law which flows from reason must discern conditions of time, place and persons. Reason has to be practical, not only speculative. The word 'command' evokes an idea of a direction and an idea of an obligation to record interventions of one's will, always controlled by reason (emphasis added). (Translation by R. Hromnysky)

I am particularly delighted with Mr. Marchand's writing on the role or rule of reason (logic).

If I give special significance to the law which "flows, above everything else, from reason", that is because I feel that reasoning was not respected from the very first day of my contacts with the psychiatrists and legal authorities.

I have always adhered to the opinion that everything in this world, including the rules of law and justice, ought to be governed by the rules of Logic, and as such it must be accepted and applied by everyone in the world, including judges and lawyers.

Again, Professor G.L. Gall, in the Introduction to his book The Canadian Legal System¹⁰ wrote:

Finally, the law must be regarded, as Lon Fuller once wrote, 'as a dimension of human life.' As such, it can compel society to take one of possible directions, the two extremes of which are set out by Professor Fuller in his treatise Anatomy of the Law: (Law) can appear as the biggest achievement of civilization, liberating for creative use human resources otherwise dedicated to destruction. It can be seen as the foundation of human dignity and freedom, our best hope for a peaceful world. In man's capacity to perceive and legislate against his own defects we can discern his chief claim to stand clearly above the animal level. Philosophers of former ages have, indeed, not hesitated to see some kinship with the divine in man's ability to reorder his own faulty nature and in effect, to recreate himself by the rule of reason. A shift in mood and all this bright glitter surrounding the law can collapse into dust. Law then becomes man's badge of infamy, his confession of ineradicable perfidy.

I don't have and am unable to add anything to this ode to the law. Professor Fuller, like Marchand, emphasizes the role of reasoning when applied to law.

In my case, the psychiatrists and the legal authorities did not apply reasoning -- "silent Logic" -- to come to reasonable conclusions. Otherwise I would not have been in a mental hospital and later in court.

At first sight, my case looks very complicated, and it is almost inconceivable that so many individuals can be "wrong" about me. Three hospitals and six psychiatrists were involved -- this, in particular, my opponents like to stress; over a dozen lawyers were hired either on my side or my opponents' side. After my internment I unsuccessfully sought help and protection from Louis Marceau, the Protector of Citizens (Ombudsman) of Quebec and R. Gagnon, the director of Quebec Legal Aid.

Mr. Pierre Boudreault, the trial judge, spent over three years on my case. In addition to two preliminary discovery examinations, he exhausted 28 days trying the case in court, and had spent over six months writing a judgment of over 200 pages for a "schizoparanoid"! In addition, three judges of the Court of Appeal and three judges of the Supreme Court of Canada took part in the case, all of them deciding to my detriment. My point in writing this book is to demonstrate that all of these authorities have made a blunder. I have strongly maintained from the beginning that neither common sense nor logic has been applied in my case.

Two letters signed by my friends Dr. P. Vujnovic and Dr. I. Mihic have been deliberately placed at the very beginning of the Appendix as Exhibits 1A and 1B, for they reflect the substance of several experts' views as well as my personal opinion about my internment in mental hospitals. We sent these letters and many others to governmental, legal and medical authorities, in an attempt to instigate an inquiry into my case. There was no positive response to our pleas.

It is interesting to note that Dr. Vujnovic and Dr. Mihic strongly denounced the psychiatrists involved as criminals in these and other letters. According to the Code of Medical Ethics, and logic, if the allegations were false, Dr. Vujnovic and Dr. Mihic should have been severely disciplined or at least reprimanded for maliciously labelling their colleagues as criminals. Instead, nothing happened to either of them. The fact remains that these letters were simply disregarded. This suggests that my internment cannot be justified, no matter who and how many persons were involved. On the other hand, the fact that no one has been able or would not dare to expose the psychiatrists, is also implicit confirmation of an immense "silent conspiracy". I presume the responsible psychiatrists exercised their power to cover up their blunders through their subsequent criminal actions. They obstructed my attempts during my internment to gain my liberty and later in court to clear my name.

For understanding the essence of this story I encourage the reader to review the exhibits in the Appendix at the end of this book.

Most of the quotations which I use are from the textbooks which Mr. Justice Boudreault referred to on page 212 of the judgment in my case. They are unusually long, but the story is unusual, too. Thus in order to understand my tale, the reader must bear in mind these quotations, which are the leitmotifs of my account.

To be objective, I sent this version of my account to some of the people involved and asked them for explicit clarification about their roles in my story. If I receive substantial and logical explanations that differ from my presentation, I will revise my conclusions in the second edition of this work.

I am particularly interested in gaining more information about the "inquiry" which was supposed to have been conducted by Louis Marceau, the Protector of Citizens (Ombudsman) of Quebec. The findings of the inquiry have never been released.

From the outset, I was never afforded an opportunity to present my side of the story. I hope that my narrative will shed new light on the activities of some unethical people in the medical and the legal professions.

With this writing, I, in effect, issue a challenge and invite all the persons involved with my misadventure to come forward and clarify their roles.